By Jo Nova
The government of Italy is planning to build new nuclear power plants. And if it happens, it marks an astonishing turnaround.
This was the Garigliano Nuclear Power plant in Italy in 1970. They already had the solution to it all, energy wars, Vladimir Putin, and fantasy “climate control” fifty years ago.
How much have we lost? Photo: Demaag
But Italy abandoned nuclear energy thirty years ago. It’s the only major European country to have stopped using nuclear power. (Though Germany is trying to).
Italy had four nuclear plants in the early 1980s but after the Chernobyl accident, they held a referendum on nuclear power, and the voters didn’t want it anymore, so they closed the last two reactors by 1990, (back in the days when voting made a difference). Furthermore, Italy held another referendum in 2011, and 94% of the voters rejected it again, which shows how desperate the situation must be now if an opinion poll like that has shifted so far in 11 years?
The thing is, Italy only makes 25% of its energy itself, and so it is suddenly very attuned to “geopolitical risk”.
Pierre Goselin at NoTricksZone found a news piece on this Nuclear U-turn in the Berliner Morgenpost. Otherwise, it’s crickets from the worlds media.
Nuclear power: Italy is planning a turnaround in energy policy
by Micaela Taroni
Under the pressure of the energy crisis, however, the Italians suddenly became painfully aware of their heavy dependence on electricity from abroad. The topic moves the citizens because they clearly feel the increase in their electricity bills despite government support.
Although renewable energies have been significantly expanded in recent years, the production of green electricity is far from sufficient.
No wonder that the new government around the right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni regards the return to nuclear energy, which the Italians had renounced following a referendum in 1987, as a solution to the energy problems.
The Infrastructure Minister (who happens to lead the second largest party in the Coalition) is dead keen:
“Italy cannot be the only major country in the world without nuclear energy. We cannot talk about phasing out gas, petrol and diesel without discussing nuclear energy,” [Matteo] Salvini explained, proposing that a nuclear power plant could be built in Milan, in his Baggio district.
When environmentalists objected that Italy was a densely populated country prone to earthquakes, landslides and floods, and on whose soil it would be better not to build nuclear reactors, Salvini replied that there were 440 nuclear reactors in operation worldwide, including several in seismically active Japan and a dozen of them in France, just over the Italian border. “Reactors of the latest generation are the safest and cleanest form of energy production, that’s the future,” assured the Lega boss.
As usual the left-leaning parties that want to reduce emissions will do anything to Not achieve that. Apparently, the big problem with nuclear power is that even though it will solve their emissions fears, it won’t meet some arbitrary committee deadline that no one else is going to meet anyway:
The Social Democrats see this “green transition” as an opportunity for the country’s economy. They oppose nuclear energy because, in their view, the timeframe and existing technologies are incompatible with a significant reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030.
It’s almost like the Social Democrats are just the useless minions for the big bankers or the renewable industry. What they fear more than the climate catastrophe is the end of their fake crisis.
So the big question then, is will Italians accept a nuclear plant now?
(The translation here is just from Chrome, don’t blame Pierre! )
The World Nuclear Association has more information on Nuclear Power in Italy.
I am fully in support of nuclear power, it’s wonderful!
However, people on the pro-energy side should be careful about promoting nuclear energy citing as an advantage that it does not emit carbon dioxide (what the Left call “carbon” (sic)) because carbon dioxide emissions are not a problem. It just reinforces the false belief that CO2 emissions are a problem. The only problem with CO2 is that we don’t have enough of it!
The decision to use nuclear should be based upon economic analysis only for any given proposal. Obviously nuclear plant will be cheaper in certain situations, coal and gas in others. The marketplace alone should decide
PS: And it’s a disgrace that Australia, with 40% of world uranium deposits, is possibly the only country in the world that outlaws nuclear power on its soil. What a primitive and regressive policy! But fully expected for what is now “the stupid country”.
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Out of all of the G20 Countries, there is only one that does not use Nuclear power to generate electricity. And that Country is the Ar## end of the World as Paul Bleating once said.
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Keating is strongly placed to appreciate what comes out of arses.
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David, with respect, the stupid country in this case is doing exactly what you recommend. We looked at nuclear power, but we have too much coal, and it’s still cheaper, so it makes perfect sense that Australia didn’t build nukes.
What makes no sense is that the Greens and Labor have thought CO2 is pollution for the last 15 years, but didn’t build a nuclear plant.
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I will go one step further than David and say that I fully support both nuclear and coal! 🙂
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Quite alright. I understand.
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40% of the world’s deposits of uranium?
Or could it e that Australia digs up and sells its uranium so cheaply that nobody else bothers to look for it?
Future generations will curse us for this.
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I’m not so sure Ted1.
I think a majority of the Australian people are now so dumbed-down and incapable of independent, critical thought, that they would neither notice or care.
As an example of how stupid the average Aussie is, look at how they first elected Daniel Andrews of Vicdanistan, and then re-elected him twice. And will likely do so at least two or three more times. Admittedly, the opposition was bad, but they were clearly slightly less bad than Andrews. And look how Labor regimes are now in all mainland states except NSW which will have one after March.
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Australian uranium is sold on long term contracts often price linked to the spot price. So if anything there is a premium for Australian uranium because we are a stable long term supplier.
I know this from working in the uranium industry for 40 years.
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Australia continues to dismantle its coal generation capacity, nuclear power reactors are outlawed, and we have governments that believe you can run an industrial civilisation on solar, wind and batteries. Indeed, coal plant is not just mothballed, it is blown up as a spectacular media event, and morons cheer.
Meanwhile, in China, as of September 2022, they had 53 nuclear power reactors. And not a word from the Left
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Well, you probably could supply enough power from wind and solar if the world’s population was, let’s say, half what it is today?
Just sayin’
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Doubtful !….and it still would not be a continuous supply with no blackouts.
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Maybe my humour doesn’t play well here 🙂
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If you aren’t sure, best add a sarc tag. (I speaketh from experience. 🙂 )
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A massively expanded installation of wind, solar and batteries might feasibly be able to provide a few hundred watts per Australian household.
This would be enough for a minimal amount of night time lighting, an Internet connected TV to receive daily one hour propaganda broadcasts from Big Brother and a few hours of “entertainment” plus, if you schedule it carefully or charge a battery, a small amount of cooking time for your meal of insects and gruel. No heating or cooling. And no electric or petrol vehicle but you may be able to charge an electric bicycle.
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If you got rid of the half that needed power on still, dark nights …?
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Elbow please take note. Your home country is going back to Nuclear, so how about your country of residence?
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Nuclear is good for a steady supply -“Base Load” as TonyfromOz calls it – but with variations in supply from renewables how would it cope while such are given priority access to the grid. The result for nuclear would be the same as for coal fired and CCGT plants which become far less profitable and are shut down (with or without being blown up). That means gas-fired “Peaking Plants” or storage.
With the cost of storage that means lots of expense and CO2 emissions from the least efficient and more costly On-Off operation. So renewables won’t be “the cheapest source of electricity”.
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The basic idea of wind and solar is that they are free. So is coal, gas and oil and uranium!
But the cost of converting wind and solar is much higher. And the total impact on the environment.
To supply the energy of Victoria we would have to cover the entire state in solar panels (based on the comment by Climate Councillor Professor Will Steffen) How enviromentally sensible is that?
History will show that coal mining, fracking, gas, oil are by far the least environmentally damaging and longest lasting sources of power and power generation and centralized generation and distribution has the least impact on the environment.
But the demonization of the element carbon rolls on. And by implication, all carbon life forms including all animals, insects and humans. The Greens believe humans are a cancer on the planet, the despoilers. So they have use ripping up the earth for lithium in their quest to be free of the sixth element of the Periodic table. It does show the carbon atoms in a Green brain are of lower quality.
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” It does show the carbon atoms in a Green brain are of lower quality.”
Isodopes?
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If we started down the nuclear path now we’d be starting to get useful power from those plants about the time existing windmills begin to need replacing, and about the same time as potential replacers realise they don’t want to. But Australia would have already shot itself in the foot by blowing up enough of our coal fired plants to guarantee continuous blackouts.
Happy new year.
Dave B
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I was amazed a few years ago when the chief salesman for Nuclear in Australia declared that nuclear has no emissions.
It is a sign of the corruption of language that carbon dioxide, the gas you are breathing out now, the gas from which all life is made as carbon lifeforms is now and unbelievably called an ’emission’, as in toxic emission. And this is considered such a dangerous gas that the cost of reducing CO2, even at a planetary level is now running in the trillions of dollars a year!
At every level, politicians no longer listen to people, they follow the dictates of the UN/EU/WEF/China. And never have a bad word to say about any of them. I was staggered that Zelensky is going to attend the next meeting of the WEF, recognizing that they are dictating politics across the world, the most elite club in the world which makes the anti human Club of Rome irrelevant.
We should all ride bicycles, when China removed them wholesale a decade ago.
We should all stop eating meat, when China cannot get enough.
We should stop all coal power plants, when China is commissioning more each year than all of Australia’s total output.
We should stop flying, when massive numbers of Chinese are fanning out and half those landing in Italy are infected with the Wuhan Flu.
We should stop the output of CO2 beyond medieval survival level when China outputs more than all other countries combined
We should stop being racists, when China is a violent monoculture
We should stop nuclear power, when China cannot get enough.
So who is dictating world policies and world opinion? Certainly not the voters in Australia or even the US. We are being told to make our very Constitution racist to prevent racism. And that sensible fiscal conservative Sir Donald Bradman is called ‘a right wing nut job’ and no one screams ‘Hate Speech’. He joins Sir Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson and Lord Nelson as villains.
And in Australia the media goes along with it, except the hated Murdoch media.
Climate Change is just the tip of the misinformation iceberg. We are being herded.
And now Italy stands out as just being very sensible and conservative. That will have to be stopped, as Tony Abbott and Bolsanaro and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump were stopped, defenestrated. Professor Peter Ridd, left with nothing for telling the truth about the Great Barrier Reef, speaking truth to power. And even Cardinal Pell, Climate Denier and Catholic, jailed for show as in China or Russia. Dangerous Right Wing Nut Jobs all. History and facts, even science are being rewritten by the Post Modernists.
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The media have always been the problem by telling you what they think you need to hear. Ram home the message and exclude any that is contra. This applies to the energy problem where distortion and outright manipulation of the truth is the go. There are the puppet masters who control the gormless media hacks who fail to do journalism. What to do.
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What are we taxpayers paying these people for?
And the CSIRO, who are meant to be a non-political, impartial organisation to provide independent scientific advice and research, actually promote the anthropogenic global warming fraud.
As do all taxpayer funded universties.
And the Bureau of Meterology do as well, and even fraudulently alter or delete data to support it.
Also, with few exceptions, nearly all politicians promote the anthropogenic global warming fraud as well.
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David, You might have missed “our” ABC in your list!
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Incidentally, 95% of the world’s uranium is dissolved in seawater but has been uneconomic to extract. Indian researchers may have found a way to economically extract it.
See: https://www.freethink.com/energy/seawater-uranium
Also, in the standard civilian nuclear fuel cycle, “waste” from reactors contains about 95%-98% of its original energy but is wastefully buried. A breeder reactor can extract that energy and results in a much less radioactive waste product.
And there are large amounts of thorium as well, Australia has about 25% of the world’s deposits. But like uranium, these are unlikely to be ever utilised in the stupid country. Because “nuclear” bad…
There is no shortage of useful nuclear fuels in the world for progressive countries which wish to use them. (And I am using “progressive” in the correct sense of the word, not what regressive Leftists call themselves.)
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The problem is that most Aussie voters are too stupid to even begin to understand Nuclear energy.
If the Coalition took Nuclear energy to the next election they would be defeated and by a wide margin.
The best we can hope for is that we build more BASE-LOAD coal or gas plants to make sure we have enough reliable energy for the foreseeable future.
Of course we should stop all TOXIC S & W ASAP, but alas we’re too stupid to even understand any of their UNRELIABLES’ data.
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“If the Coalition took Nuclear energy to the next election they would be defeated and by a wide margin.”
Not so sure about that, it’s certainly a debate well worth having and the sooner it starts the better.
The longer that nitwit Energy Minister Chris Bowen has his hands on the levers, the more likely huge rolling blackouts and even a few “system blacks” will begin occurring.
And that’s before considering rapidly rising electricity prices and industry closures that will have become toxic election issues.
Losing an election on the issue on the issue of nuclear power would be a noble defeat. The evidence from around the world is piling up and here in Australia, the penny will ultimately drop.
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I think if that happens coal power and not unreliables will be blamed.
There will be an increased, dramatic push for more unreliables as fast as possible.
Remember, that for years now the propaganda has been injecting the idea into The Sheeple that coal power is “dirty”, “obsolete”, “expensive” and “unreliable” while wind, solar and batteries are nothing but goodness, niceness and the cheapest form of power.
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If the Coalition took Nuclear to the next election and pointed out the flaws in expensive unreliable energy they would win easily. The reason they lost in ’22 was that they did not criticize any of the labor pagan energy witchcraft. They just said “me too” but slower.
By being NetZero they crippled themselves. They couldn’t blast the Labor fantasy because it was theirs as well.
The Coalition could have been visionary, realistic, forward thinking. They could have appealed to workers feel electricity price pain, and they could have appealed to half the teals too.
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Recent public opinion polls have a majority supporting nuclear energy. So it’s the politicians who are letting us down
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And those polls are strong even though there has been near zero discussion of nuclear.
How many Australians know there are 440 nuclear plants in the world?
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440 to many.
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What a ridiculous comment.
Countries need solid reliable electricity.
If they don’t have access to large amounts of coal or gas, and aren’t in a high rainfall/snowfall, high terrain area for hydro…
… Where are they meant to get that reliable electricity from !?
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chernobyl, fukushima??
https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2021-10-08/Chernobyl-German-mushrooms-are-still-radioactive-three-decades-on-14cis4tVjH2/index.html
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Hiroshima then and now….
https://www.thinkinghumanity.com/2015/09/hiroshima-then-and-now-you-wont-believe-what-it-looks-like-today.html?m=1
The accumulated devastation to humanity by anti-nuke policies would vastly exceed all harms from nuclear power.
Nuclear power, unlike wind and solar, is safe, reliable and affordable.
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I have no qualms about nuclear in Australia.. its just that we really don’t need it.
We have plenty of the world’s best coal available… and it does more to help the world’s biosphere than anything else.
All that luvly CO2 🙂
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AGAIN the data proves that their TOXIC S & W disasters can’t even power a small island with under 2000 residents.
Most of the time the Diesel generator saves them and yet our clueless pollies want to inflict this misery across Australia and leave us to the tender mercies of China, Russia, Iran etc.
No doubt about it we’re barking mad today and yet the majority of voters support this lunacy?
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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Along with King Island and Flinders Island, Lord Howe Island now has an unreliables project.
https://arena.gov.au/blog/lord-howe-island-renewables-switch/
I would be surprised if it is genuinely economically viable although isolated islands or remote communities or infrastructure are the only places where solar, wind and batteries might possibly have a chance of being viable.
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It amuses me that the one thing the Greens desperately don’t want (nuclear energy) might get widely used as a result of Green scare campaigns.
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That is the irony.
Australia is not in the same position and we have the luxury of choice, so the Green/Left won’t support nuclear power generation.
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The trouble with Italy is that that there will be a change of government and this nuclear policy will probably be reversed. You need stable government for long periods to maintain the long time frames for a nuclear build. Both in the planning and construction phase. But you also need a stable and influential public service backing it. To me that is sometimes more important than which political party is in power. That’s Australia’s problem. We appear to have a federal Energy ministry that are both anti-coal and anti nuclear. They are both Al Gore and Helen Caldicott acolytes.
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Italy’s Infrastructure Minister, Mateo Salvini needn’t worry about Italy being the only major country without nuclear power, Australia appears to have a permanent position in that regard. Perhaps we could get Mr Salvini over here on secondment to be our energy minister. Meanwhile promote our bloke to CEO of a barbed wire canoe factory. And while we’re on a good thing, send our PM to the same factory then invite Georgia Meloni to do a sabatical year over here as guest Prime Minister. Just fantasising!
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I’m not confident that anything can be done to stop the solar, wind and anti-energy madness.
Present company excepted, who is there to tell the truth?
And no one would listen anyway because:
1) IQs have dropped in the last 50 years.
2) Male testosterone levels have dropped so men are increasingly feminised and unable to provide traditional leadership roles to promote the truth.
We therefore have a population (male and female) that is deliberately dumbed-down by the education system plus a drop of IQ for unknown reasons plus a population of feminised men.
1) Ref. for drop of IQ.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
2) Ref. for drop of testosterone in men.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/92/1/196/2598434
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The general public are not qualified to make a judgement, they do not understand NC and CF, intermittent operation or the back up costs and transmission lines needed, they mostly assume that wind and solar plugs in and provides electricity, and the politicians convince them the technology is cheaper and will eventually drive electricity prices down.
They even believe that battery storage is as good as a generator.
And they are the thinking ones, the rest don’t care.
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I always like Threads like these from Joanne, because with each one, it piques my interest to go and check things.
Ostensibly, both Australia and Italy are already Developed Countries, or in less PC language ‘First World Countries’, so things like power consumption should be quite similar, eh!
So then, look at this with respect to power consumption.
Australia with a population of 26 million has a total overall power consumption of 230TWH a year. (both AEMO coverage area AND WA)
Italy with a population of 60 million has a total overall power consumption of 302TWH a year.
So with a population greater than ours by 230%, they consume only 31% more power than we do.
Tony.
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Very interesting Tony.
I wonder what accounts for the power consumption difference?
Neither country has an extremely hot or cold climate (at least not where most people live) so not a lot of power is needed for heating or cooling as in the US, Canada and northern Europe.
And most of Australia’s industry is shut down due to high electricity prices and excessive union dem ands, while Italy has a lot of industry left.
Perhaps Australia uses a lot for mining and mineral processing such as for aluminium. Aluminium smelting is no longer economically viable in Australia due to high electricity prices but survives because of massive government subsidies initiated by the Turnbull regime and continued ever since.
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Joanne has made this sort of mistake too. 60 is 230% of 26, but it’s only 130% greater than 26. You subtract 100 because you’ve already said it’s greater than. Think what 10% greater means.
More straighforward just to say their population is 2.3 times ours.
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It is, but as I replied last time when we discussed this, I was quoting figures by other groups which used the ambiguous %. I added in extra info so I needed to stick to the same system to remain comparable.
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There’s a good chance you missed my response to your reply. You chose the wording, and it was your wording that made it wrong. 200% above normal is not the same as 200% of normal.
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I’m wondering if lots of homes use wood stoves for both heating and cooking. I’ve heard anecdotal reports but didn’t find info on the web.
In parts of Europe a household has access to a forest parcel from which they may harvest woody materials. Again, this is hard to document.
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Generally a bad idea to use the word “Italy” in the same sentence as the word “planning” … especially if government is involved.
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Generally a bad idea also to use “Italy” in the same sentence as “government”.
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Two years ago, the Netherlands also made a big u-turn on nuclear. For years it was not even allowed to mention the n-word. Now the Netherlands is planning to build 2 nuclear reactors. From 2035, they should produce 9~13% of the Dutch electricity.
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While there’s the possibility of a new nuclear power plant maybe getting constructed in Italy, the enormity of the problem in Australia is this.
You know how difficult it would be to propose and construct a new technology coal fired power plant here in Australia.
Well, there’s more chance of THAT coal fired plant being constructed than there is for a nuclear power plant, be it large scale or SMR type.
Tony.
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In Australia it took 50 years to decide about the location of a second Sydney airport.
It would take about the same time to decide about a new coal power station but probably a century or more for a nuclear power station.
And most people are unaware that Australia nearly once did get a nuclear power station.
It was to be built in Jervis BaY, NSW and construction was actualy started but it was stopped by PM McMahon in 1971. It is not clear why McMahon was against it or what “special interests” got to him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jervis_Bay_Nuclear_Power_Plant?wprov=sfla1
It was also once proposed in the 1960’s to build a nuclear power station at French Island, VIC.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/how-victorias-n-power-future-became-its-past-20050228-gdzon6.html
Here is the official propaganda from Australia’s Climate Council about nuclear power in Australia.
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/nuclear-power-stations-are-not-appropriate-for-australia-and-probably-never-will-be/
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It took more than a decade to gain cooperation between Federal and States before the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme Project could be started.
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“Here is the official propaganda from Australia’s Climate Council about nuclear power in Australia.”
That really is propaganda and lies, I’m amazed they can write it with a straight face!
I could tear it apart sentence by sentence, but I’m sure anyone on here could do the same. From outdated surveys to blatant lies about environmental effects, it’s a classic piece. The sooner we revolt and make taxes voluntary the better! All these sorts of outfits would vanish if they had to raise their own funds.
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The Morrison Coalition Government proposed a new coal fired power station for North Queensland, and four gas fired generators, one each Victoria and Queensland and two for New South Wales which are now being built, I understand Snowy Hydro (Federal Government wholly owned now) following State approval.
The North Queensland proposal included Federal Government underwriting the finance for any private sector investor/s but apparently Labor Queensland are not interested.
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Yes there is nothing quite like democracy for getting things done . .
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Nuclear for Australia is inevitable but the woke fools masquerading as our elected representatives in the majority are happy to squander taxpayer’s monies on unreliable wind and solar installations plus the expensive back up “firming” equipment, transmission lines to main grid and now a new second main grid exclusively for wind and solar.
I understand that when the Howard Coalition Government agreed to ban nuclear via legislation it was agreed to gain support of Labor-Greens for other issues of the day and probably because SMRs were not yet an option, although a Report into nuclear commissioned by the Howard Government earlier had recommended SMR technology for the future after retirement of coal fired power stations, the now that was the future at that time.
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“Under the pressure of the energy crisis, however, the Italians suddenly became painfully aware of their heavy dependence on electricity from abroad. The topic moves the citizens because they clearly feel the increase in their electricity bills despite government support.”
Many more countries need a taste of no power for a while, their attitudes to reliable sources of power might change drastically.
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So if we ever reach net zero and we stop or reducing using gas and coal, that’s a substantial revenue loss for our government – where are they going to get the extra $$$ needed to run this country? Sell all of our reserves to OS customers to collect a resource tax, more taxes, tax the rich, more tax on the companies extracting our FF reserves and minerals for selling OS?
They are going to tax Ev’s for using the road, due to the eventual loss of fuel exercise. How about taxing the renewables for the use of the wind and the sun? We pay for water,(rainfall) a natural resource, we pay for wood from the forests for our home fires. Growing trees must be free as well except for the land and the cost of processing the timber.
As people have commented in here, coal and gas are essentially free, but those who access it have to put in infrastructure to use it as well as pay taxes for the privilege to extract it. Wind and solar are free and you have to spend $$$$ to access it, no different to accessing our FF resource, so no more subsidies, pay for the wind and the sun, they are after all our natural resources.
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The only thing that matters to governments is that there are sufficient people earning enough money to pay whatever taxes they impose. How and upon what those taxes are applied doesn’t really matter. They make a fortune out of taxing cigarettes but, if everybody stopped smoking, they would just whack an extra tax on milk, or bread, or walking upright.
Taxes are really just means of skimming off the government’s share whenever money moves around. Then there are fees, charges, tolls, rates, levies …
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Back int’ olden days, in England (and other places at various times), the government placed a tax on chimneys (actually hearths, but same thing really).
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.. yep, and windows !..
And, if youthink about it,..”Land Tax” is just a tax on the space you occupy..
..”Stamp Duty “.. ?…. a tax on buying a home !
…we are all suckers !
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It’s all in how the question is phrased. The next time the vote for or against nuclear power is put to the low info voters, perhaps it should trad…
“Do you want reliable affordable power, or do you prefer to go bankrupt and sit in the dark with no heat, AC or ability to cook your food?
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